In the prior art, many different types of devices have been proposed for attachment to the end of the barrels of firearms for accomplishing various purposes. Most notably, such attachments have been for the purpose of silencing the noise produced by the firing of the gun or for reducing the recoil of the gun. Some such attachments have been proposed for stabilizing the flight of the projectile. A few such attachments have been proposed for reducing the flash emitted from the end of the barrel when the gun is fired.
For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 587,802 to Durnford; 323,303 to Fosberry; and 37,193 to Alsop disclose attachments for shotgun type barrels for stabilizing a signal projectile with such guns.
So-called silencers are well known, and usually comprise an attachment having a series of baffles which are designed to reduce the noise.
U.S. Pat. No. 32,685 to DeBrame discloses a gun barrel design which utilizes a so-called "skeleton barrel" whereby the barrel has a number of longitudinally extending slots formed therein. The slots are either straight, in the case of unrifled barrels, or spiraled in the case of a rifled barrel. The purpose of these slots is to reduce the amount of metal which can contact the projectile in order to reduce the friction on the projectile and thereby improve the ballistic characteristics of the projectile, namely the force and distance of the projectile.
However, these prior art patents are primarily intended for use with firearms using black powder, rather than modern smokeless powder, and the difference in the type of powder used is significant, and well known. Black powder produces an "explosion" and produces a high amount of smoke upon firing the gun, and additionally leaves a significant residue on the barrel of the gun, and has a much lower pressure exerted on the projectile, resulting in quite different ballistic characteristics.
Moreover, due to the explosive "burn" of black powder, the gas pressure and the projectile velocity reach a maximum at a point ahead of the muzzle end of the barrel, while the gas pressure which results from smokeless powder produces an increasing velocity of the projectile as it travels through the barrel until it leaves the barrel. As a result, with black powder, the projectile tends to be coasting before it leaves the barrel, and any reduction in friction in the barrel would increase the muzzle velocity, but simply by reducing the drag on the projectile. However, increased barrel lengths produce greater accuracy, and thus there must be a compromise between accuracy and projectile velocity (or force) in the case of black powder firearms.
The increasing velocity of projectiles which are fired from smokeless powder, however, is a result of the controlled burn of the powder resulting in steadily increasing gas pressure (and velocity) until the projectile leaves the gun barrel. Thus, the use of smokeless powder produces both greater velocity and greater accuracy, since longer barrels may be used without sacrificing accuracy for force.
However, as a result of this controlled burning, there usually exists some powder still burning at the point when the projectile leaves the barrel, and the burning of this powder outside the muzzle end of the barrel produces a flash of light shortly beyond the end of the barrel. This flash of light is undesirable in some circumstances, and gives rise to the need for a flash suppressor or flash hider for use in firearms using modern, smokeless powder.
A flash suppressor is, however, by its very nature rather different from a noise suppressor or silencer. An attachment for reducing noise is similar in nature to a muffler which has baffles and chambers to reduce the noise of gasses passing through the device. When such noise suppressors are used on rifles, however, they greatly reduce the velocity of the bullet emerging from the barrel and also the accuracy of the gun to which they are attached. Thus such silencers are unsuited for use on rifles and the like for longer range shooting where accuracy becomes more critical.
Flash suppressors, however, must be capable of use on rifles used for long range shooting without hampering the accuracy of the gun.
Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to provide an improved flash suppressor for use with rifled gun barrels.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a flash hider for gun barrels which does not deleteriously affect the accuracy of the firearm.
A further object of this invention is to provide a flash suppressor capable of reducing the visibility of the muzzle flash of a firearm on the order of 40-50% and more over conventional flash suppressors in use.
Still another object of the invention is to provide a flash suppressor which actually improves the ballistic characteristics of the projectile after it leaves the muzzle end of the gun while still providing the greatly enhanced suppression of the muzzle flash.
Yet a further object of the present invention is to provide a flash suppressor which may be used with a variety of different calibers of firearms with similarly improved results.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide an improved flash suppressor which improves the muzzle velocity and the accuracy of the gun while still significantly reducing the muzzle flash.
These and other objects of the invention will become apparent when considered in light of the following specification and claims, when taken together with the accompanying drawings.